Plot
Sheryl Hoover is a stressed mother of two living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her husband Richard is an aspiring motivational speaker and life coach. Dwayne, Sheryl's Nietzsche-admiring teenage son from her previous marriage, has taken a vow of silence until he accomplishes his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. Sheryl's older brother Frank Ginsburg, a gay scholar of Proust, is living with the family after attempting suicide. Richard's foul-mouthed father Edwin is also living with the family after being evicted from a retirement home for snorting heroin. Olive, Richard and Sheryl's 7-year-old daughter, is an aspiring beauty queen coached by Edwin.
Olive learns she has qualified for the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant being held in Redondo Beach, California, in two days. Richard, Sheryl, and Edwin want to support her, and Frank and Dwayne cannot be left alone, so the whole family attends. Due to financial constraints, they go on an 800-mile (1,300 km) road trip in their yellow Volkswagen van. Family tensions play out along the way, amidst the aging van's mechanical problems. When the van's clutch breaks early on, the only way to drive it is to push it fast enough for the driver to put it into gear, then jump in the open side door. Later, the van's horn starts honking by itself, and at one point the side door falls off.
Throughout the trip, the family suffers numerous personal setbacks and discovers their need for each other's support. When the family stops at a gas station, Frank, while buying pornography for Edwin, embarrassingly meets his ex-boyfriend who, in leaving him for an academic rival, had prompted his suicide attempt. One night, at a hotel, Richard loses an important contract with businessman Stan Grossman which would have jump-started his motivational business, and when he goes to confront him in Scottsdale, Edwin snorts heroin in his room, leading to a fatal overdose. When the grief counselor refuses to let the family leave his corpse at the hospital while they go to the pageant, they smuggle it out the room window and into the van, almost getting caught when a police officer pulls them over because of the honking horn, only managing to escape trouble due to the police officer's fascination with the pornography.
During the final leg of the trip, Dwayne discovers he is color blind, meaning he cannot become a pilot. This revelation prompts him to finally break his silence and shout his disdain for his family, though he apologizes after Olive calms him with a gentle hug.
After a frantic race against the clock, the family arrives at the pageant hotel. Sheryl prepares Olive for her performance while Richard makes arrangements for Edwin's body. The other contestants are slim, sexualized pre-teens who perform elaborate dance numbers with great panache. Fearing that the amateur Olive will be humiliated, Richard and Dwayne try to stop her from performing, but Sheryl insists that they "let Olive be Olive", and she goes on stage.
The hitherto-unseen dance routine Edwin had taught Olive is revealed to be a striptease performed to the Rocasound remix of Rick James' "Super Freak". Olive is oblivious to the subtext of the routine, but it horrifies and angers most of the audience, and the pageant organizer demands she be removed from the stage. Richard physically prevents this, and the family all join Olive on stage, dancing alongside her to show their support.
The family is later released from the hotel's security office on the condition that Olive never enter a beauty pageant in California again. Piling into the van with the horn still honking, they begin their trip home to Albuquerque.
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